Ciudad de México
With the phone issues I've been having, it appears as though a lot of pictures have gone missing, so yeah, sorry about that. When I get to leaving for Europe, they will return.
January 29 2018
My adventures in San Miguel de Allende have come to a close, Mexico has been a fantastic time, Amy looks really sad as the car pulls away. The blue doors recede as Angela and Fernanda chat away in the front seat. Down the hill we go as I mentally tick off things in my head, "Goodbye abarrote around the corner, goodbye abarrote down the hill, goodbye casa where the door is way too high for anyone to reasonably get in."
As I roll my heavy pack outside of the back seat, Angela tells me that she has friends in Belgium and to let her know if I need a place to stay. I nod and assure her that I will, but I really have no intention of it. I am going to go to Europe and backpack where I can, much like I have done in the states. The bus station is sparsely populated and I feel for my headphones, of course, I forgot something. I grind my teeth and my shoulders clench, then breath, it's okay, this is why so many redundancies exist in my pack. I send a message to Garth that if he finds them, he should take them with him and use them as he pleases, or just send them to my Dad's house, or stick them up his butt if he wants them.
I have a kindly large Hispanic man as my bus mate for the three hour trip to Mexico. While I have gotten pretty good at Spanish, I offer my stilting words to him and he smiles and says stuff back to me really quickly, he works in San Miguel, and has family in Mexico City, he does something like sales and repair of refrigeration units. His daughter has five children, and then he tells me what they do for work as well, but he's speaking too fast for me to really understand much more.
Eventually we settle into comfortable silence, he turns on the screen in front of him and bears with the fifteen minutes of commercials, then settles into to watching a movie about a young boy who grows up to be a bandito. The buses in Mexico are so so so much better than in the States. There is great competition between all of them, and they are very inexpensive in comparison. I take the high quality bus because it's a direct route, and still less expensive than Greyhound. They give you snacks, which include a couple muffins, some popcorn and cookies, and a drink, I chose the orange soda.
As we get to Mexico City my busmate gives me instructions on how to use the subway, or suggests that the bus company will be able to get me a taxi. I am more adventurous than the latter, so I thank him and head out into the bustling Estacíon Norte. Easily the largest bus station I've ever seen, I huff and puff my way through it and very luckily there is public WiFi. My phone still has the data problem, but at least I've taken steps to save the maps to it. Now with the public Wi-Fi, I can simply use the directions given to me by Google.
Mexico City is big, really really big. In fact, I will never see any of the center city because if I did try to walk there from the Hostel, it would take me two hours. The place where I stay is about a 10 minute walk from the airport. It is very much a work in progress, they look as if they are building a third level onto the building. My room is on the Terrace level and everything has picked up at a flea market then covered with nice fabrics appeal. In fact, I think this is only my second time staying in a hostel. And very casual, when I return later, most of the staff are sleeping on the couches scattered around the place, at that point it is only somewhere around seven or eight o'clock at night.
The afternoon is spent walking the streets of Mexico City. Children are lighting off fireworks in the street, people gather around streetcarts eating gringas and tacos. There are pieces of foil streamers hanging across some of the streets. I pass through a market that seems to be shutting down, hand knit pieces of clothing being put into boxes. Little plastic pieces of whatever are being shoved into boxes. Meat is wrapped up and put away into large red plastic containers and fruits and veggies are being dumping into wooden crates.
About every three blocks or so, there is a shrine to the Virgen de Guadaloupe. Everyone of them is singular, some of them are put behind glass, and others are just paintings against the corner of a building with flowers placed next to them. One of them is an intricate statue placed into of a purple castle large than me. Eventually, I return to the hostel, to turn in for the night.